Heroes Like Us
A young man from an early age falls in love with a girl whose family is not in good standing with the ruling Communist party. His father however is a member of the "Stasi", the secret state police. The father not only hinders his son's relationship with the girl, but he arranges for his son, after finishing school, to become a Stasi spy himself.
Go for Zucker
Germany director Dani Levy filmed this comedy about Jewish life in today’s Germany along side the familiar east-west conflict. With it great success this film is a joyful comedy of humor and knowledge.
Tykho Moon
The McBee family has erected a government over a future 'colony', that looks like a run-down Paris divided into sectors by the Berlin Wall. All male family members suffer from a mysterious disease and are in urgent need of organ transplants. The perfect donor, Tykho Moon, probably has been killed in a fire, but according to rumours he's still alive. Although assassins stalk the family members, the McBees start a hunt for Tykho. Trying to escape the dragnet, Alex, a sculptor, meets Lena, a killer posing as a whore.
Open the Wall
A lighthearted look at the opening of the border crossing of Bornholmer Straße in Berlin from the point of view of the confused border guards.
Führer Ex
Ingo Hasselbach, whose parents were Communist Party members in East Germany during his childhood, has lived at both ends of the political seesaw. The question of how people reach a change of heart is a profound one; Hasselbach describes the external forces that led to his founding Germany's first neo-Nazi political party and the internal ones that led him away from it five years later.
The Boy and the Ball and the Hole in the Wall
Not realizing the dangers he is facing, Young Dieter will do anything to get his ball back after it was thrown over the Berlin wall by a ruthless guar
Berlin is in Germany
When Martin, a former GDR citizen, is released from jail, he lately becomes confronted with the consequences of the German re-unification.
Eastern Cross
15-year-old Elfie literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanies shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany.
Escape from East Berlin
East Berlin, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Schröder and his family dig a tunnel to escape to West Berlin as they struggle to overcome the obstacles blocking their underground path to freedom.
Stories of That Night
Four directors - four styles - four episodes, all relating the events of a single night which has entered the history books: August 12-13, 1961. There are thousands of complex narratives connected with the frontier drawn through the middle of Berlin, and each episode relates the story of a difficult decision made on that night...
Stasi: A State Against Its People
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without their knowledge could be reconstructed.
Die Klasse - Berlin '61
In the motley final-year class 13e at Kepler School in Neukölln, children who have moved to the western part of the city legally as well as border crossers who live in East Berlin but commute to the West every day come together for lessons every day. After the school-leavers had completed their written exams in July 1961, they faced their oral exams after the summer vacation in September. But when the Berlin Wall was built in August, Berlin was divided and torn apart from one day to the next - including class 13e. The students from the eastern part of the city quickly have to make a difficult decision: should they attempt to cross the border or throw their dreams of the future to the wind?
Learning to Lie
18-year-old school boy Helmut falls in love with fellow pupil Britta. He starts working for a Peace movement to get to know Britta. Britta, however, suddenly moves to San Francisco to live with her father and whilst there, finds a new boyfriend. Helmut studies, literature and politics in his home town and have a relationship with another girl from his former school, now studying medicine at the same university but they break up after having an affair with her roommate. Helmut begins a lot of short affairs with different women but still searches for his first girl.
Solidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe
Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.
Der Reichstag
Docudrama telling the story of a building with a breath taking career that began in the empire, flourished in the Weimar Republic, perished in the Nazi dictatorship, and was rebuilt after its partial destruction.
Never Mind the Wall
Germany 1982: The country is divided into two parts. Nele, coming from West-Germany, travels to East-Germany where she meets Captain, singer of a band. They fall in love with each other, but the regime "takes care" of their relationship, meaning: They can not see each other again. Germany 1990: The country is reunited. Nele starts searching their lost love...
The Architects
The architect Daniel Brenner is in his late thirties when he receives his first challenging and lucrative commission: to design a cultural center for a satellite town in East-Berlin. He accepts the offer under the condition that he gets to choose who he works with. This way, he reunites with former colleagues and friends - most of them architects or students of architecture who have since chosen a different profession due to personal restraint or economic confinement. Together, they develop a concept which they hope will be more appealing to the public than the conventional and dull constructions common to the German Democratic Republic. However, their ambitious plans are once and again foiled by their conservative supervisors. As frustration grows, Daniel has trouble keeping his career in balance with his family-life: his wife Wanda wants to leave for West-Germany.
When the Water Stops Flowing
Jonathan Stavleu explores, in a stream-of-consciousness video essay, the relationship people have with water and what happens when access to it is taken away. For this work, he examines anecdotal histories he has heard from Estonians, as well as stories from his own family history in the Netherlands, weaving them together into a journal-like narrative.
Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie
Based on a true story, Miguel Alexandre's two-part drama focuses on an East German woman and the fight for her children. Spring 1982: Sara Bender, living with her daughters Silvia and Sabine in the East German town of Erfurt, wants to marry her colleague Peter, but shortly before the wedding, her father is killed in a road accident. As the funeral takes place in West Germany, she isn't allowed to got there, so she starts planning to leave her communist home country forever. Trying to flee via Romania, she is caught by the secret service. After years in jail, Sara is ransomed by the West German government, but without her daughters. To draw the world's attention on her desperate situation, she starts demonstrating at the Berlin border crossing Checkpoint Charlie
One-way to Moscow
30 years ago, Switzerland was shaken by a scandal that seems to have already been forgotten: more than 900,000 people were surveilled because of their political convictions. Against the backdrop of this "secret files scandal," Micha Lewinsky sets his film. Conscientious policeman Viktor Schuler is tasked by his superior to infiltrate the Schauspielhaus, a renowned Zurich theatre, in order to keep an eye on its leftist scene. However, Viktor finds himself quite taken with the artist's life and falls in love with the subversive actress Odile Lehmann.